Topic on Talk:Stuffed Into the Fridge

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Alright, let's try to take this from the top and see if I can decipher it:

"It is basically an excuse to attack any work which dares to harm a female character."

From the very first paragraph of the current definition:

A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks.

And from what Goo quoted:

The term came to be used more broadly, over time, to refer to any character who is killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of lending impetus to another (usually male) character.

Notice that neither of the above definitions are exclusive to women - by virtue of including best buddies and sidekicks, in fact, one could argue there are just as many male examples.

"No, in no possible way. I'm not gonna engage in such a radical vision of the world."

What about this suggestion makes it remotely indicative of a worldview held by Goo or anyone else, let alone a """radical""" one? That's a lot of assumptions to extrapolate from discussing a trope that can be described "I think this character died just so they could advance the plot." Tropes Are Tools, and like all tools can be used badly - it simply happens that killing characters for shock value tends to be a common "misuse" of such tools.

"And I do not consider Ms. Gordon in the Killing Joke fridging. Harming her served a practical purpose, and latter a technical purpose, Joker was trying to goad her father into evil"

...by causing him anguish through disabling his daughter, which was ultimately the extent of her role in the plot - because that's how they wrote it up. Thus, by:

Severely injuring her
for the purpose of causing Batman and Gordon anguish, and
trying to tempt the latter into evil

...it meets the above definition of fridging on a categorical basis, rather than whatever pejorative sense you're picturing it in.

For the record, I think it was poor treatment of Barbara Gordon - but unlike a lot of fridging examples, I think they did "right" by her afterward with Oracle. It aged far better than the animated adaptation's handling of her, that much is certain.

""This is what some people use those words for outside the wiki" is a pretty weak argument. I'm not even sure if it's a trope."

...how is that a """weak argument""" when it's literally the foundation of how troping works period - by identifying patterns in fiction and identifying their use and applications? And on the note of weak arguments, how is the easily observable trend of killing off a character's friends and/or family to cause them angst not a trope?

It really just seems like you're protesting the potential viewing of a trope in a way that you, personally, dislike and are just trying to rationalize it after the fact.